


Thin Ice

by Paian



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: 10000-30000 words, Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Episode Related, Episode: s07e21 Lost City (1), First Time, Graphic Sex, M/M, Resolved Sexual Tension, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-03-28
Updated: 2007-03-28
Packaged: 2017-10-08 04:35:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/72745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paian/pseuds/Paian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Another take on the missing time in 'Lost City Part 1,' between the impromptu gathering at Jack's house and Daniel's first conversation with Weir.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thin Ice

After Sam had called it a night -- slipping out first, so that the general would see her go -- and Hammond had taken Teal'c off in his car to drop back at the mountain, Daniel stood in the hallway by the front door Jack was holding open, keenly aware that this was the first time he'd been alone in Jack's house with Jack since he came back.

In the old days, he'd just have crashed here. He wished he could just do that now. The day had been unseasonably warm, but February had reasserted itself with a plunge in temperature that made Jack close the patio doors halfway through pizza and a brief spit of sleet about an hour ago, and Daniel's light shirt was uncomfortably insufficient. The drive to his house seemed a long, dark, cold way, and the house at the end of it wasn't a home. But Jack's new couch didn't fold out, and the recliner down in the rec room was hell on the back, and it would only be torture, staying here. And Jack hadn't asked. There was a reason the sofa he'd acquired during Daniel's absence wasn't a hide-a-bed.

"Sheesh," Jack said, closing the door on the night, the sharp chill, as the taillights of Hammond's car disappeared from view. "Never had to host my own wake before."

His tone was the kind you'd take with a co-host when the guests had left.

Or with a roommate. Or a spouse.

Daniel chalked it up to one of those moments of whimsical Jack weirdness. The relaxed intimacy it implied didn't exist. It had, once, or something close to it. Not anymore. "I'll get out of your hair," he said. He wondered if any of the sleet had stuck. He wanted to make a mad dash for his Jeep, which was parked out at the curb. He didn't want to borrow a coat. He didn't want to go back to his place wrapped in something Jack had worn.

"Stick around for a while," Jack said. "I'll lay a fire in. You only drank one pot of coffee."

For a while. In a while, it would only be colder, darker, later.

"I'm OK to drive," he said.

"I know." In a low voice, Jack said, "I'd like you to stay, Daniel."

Abruptly Daniel became aware of how close Jack was standing. Or how close he was standing to Jack, because he'd been moving for that open door, expecting it to stay open. Close enough to feel Jack's body heat, smell the Guinness and pepperoni on his breath when he spoke. The moment became exquisitely awkward. It felt exactly like a date, at the end where you weren't sure whether you were going to kiss goodnight. At the same time, there was a subtext of aggression to it. Technically Jack was in his way. Standing between him and the door.

Standing close enough that all Daniel had to do was reach out. Lean forward.

Jack's lowered eyes rose to meet his, and then flickered downward, to his lips, his throat. It was only for a second; they came up again, hardening with embarrassment, and it could have been, must have been, embarrassment at having to ask for company.

"I'd like to stay," Daniel said. He meant it honestly. It sounded hedging.

"But you won't?"

Daniel opened his mouth, thinking _I will, of course I will, I'll stay as long as you'll have me._ But he didn't understand the terms of the dialogue, and what came out was "What are you asking me for, Jack?"

It was a genuine question, not a challenge; he really needed to know.

It was also a mistake. "The pleasure of your company, Daniel," Jack said, with soft, vicious sarcasm, and stepped back. "Don't slip on my walk. The estate won't pay out."

_Years of pushing me away, and suddenly--_"You want to ... talk?"

"I didn't say anything about talking. Go home, Daniel."

_I have no home. This should have been home_. "What, then? Sit in companionable silence while the Ancients rewire your synapses? Call the mountain. Get an airman to come stay with you."

"They assigned someone to me. I sent him back. You remember how the door works?"

Daniel stared hard at the doorknob for a moment, during which he had three extended conversations with Jack in his head, in which they asked and answered the questions they meant to ask and gave the answers they meant to give and understood them, then turned to face Jack straight on. "Was it because everyone thought you were fucking me?"

"_Excuse_ me?"

"The distance. The no-more-touching. The whole mindblowingly cruel flirtation with Sam. Was that you asserting your heterosexuality?"

"What the _fuck_ do you expect me to say to a question like that?"

"Yes or no? Get pissed or avoid the question? I guess I just thought it was worth a shot before the end. Enjoy the rest of the weekend, Jack."

"Everyone thought I was _fucking_ you?" Jack said, as Daniel turned the knob.

"Yeah." Daniel paused, then opened the door. Wintry air gusted in. He barely felt it. Nothing to lose anymore. "And I wanted it to be true, so maybe it was better, the way you played it. Saved me from myself. I should have let it lie. You don't owe me any explanations. Goodnight, Jack."

He stepped out into the cold, and skidded halfway down the icy walk, turning in to an unintentional spin that left him facing the open door. It was like flying. He laughed. A swing of his arms spun him back around. Like a kind of horizontal zero-g. Cool.

He slipslid down to the curb. The lock on the driver's-side door of his Jeep was iced in. He didn't look back at Jack's house, just skated around, tried the other locks, and fished his cell phone from his pocket. Impose on the Air Force or just call triple-A? It was juvenile not to scrabble back up the slick path and ask Jack for some de-icer, but the pain in his heart was bad. He wished Jack had slammed the door. It would have been easier, with that symbolic closure. He was so close to being free.

He was bringing up his phonebook, his back to the house, when Jack came up behind him and put a coat around his shoulders. "Get back in the house, Daniel."

"Fuck off, Jack." The coat felt wonderful. A proxy embrace. Blessed relief from cold he wouldn't let himself feel. He pushed the wrong button, cycled up into the Zs, as he shrugged his shoulders to get the coat off him. The coat didn't fall. Jack's arm tightened on him. "Which part of 'fuck off' did you not understand?"

"I'm sorry I got pissy with you. Turn the phone off and come inside."

"It's no big deal. They'll be here in ten minutes."

"So will hypothermia."

"Then they should make it just in the nick of time." He held down the arrow till AAA came up, and hit enter. The number materialized on the small, bright screen.

Jack's free hand covered the phone. His body came around behind it, pulling Daniel against him, folding Daniel's arms between them. His chest was warm, a live space heater. Daniel knew he should shove him away, but the warmth, the touch melted him. "What'll the neighbors say?" he said softly, coldly, while he could still control his voice.

"Fuck the neighbors." Jack pulled him closer; low, by his ear, said, "Fuck the Air Force. Come back inside."

Daniel blinked hard, then let his eyes slide closed. "Don't do this, Jack."

"I'm just getting you warm and bringing you inside. Come on, desert boy. I don't care how long you lived in Chicago, you can't handle this stuff."

As Jack's arm pressed him back up the walkway, he realized that it was snowing -- big, fluffy flakes, thickening with every step he took, laying a slippery layer down over the ice left by the earlier sleet. He was resistant enough, distracted enough, conflicted enough, tired enough that he slipped on the path; Jack's arm held him firmly, easily. He'd never closed the door. He ushered Daniel through and locked it behind them while Daniel was fumbling the coat off himself. "You have de-icer?" Daniel asked.

"De-icer, boots, sweater, coat," Jack said. "If you really want to go. I want you to stay and tell me if you said what I thought you said."

"I said you didn't owe me any explanations," Daniel said wearily, leaning back against the hallway wall, closing his eyes. He hadn't slept in two days; he'd been up all night combing through printed texts for any reference to humans interfacing with Ancient repositories. "That means I don't owe you any either. Would you get the de-icer?"

Jack came around in front of him and leaned his arms on the wall to either side of Daniel's head. "All I ever heard was a lot of old-married-couple jokes," he said, looking straight into Daniel's eyes. "If I'd heard anyone imply what you just said I'd have dealt with them directly and you'd never have heard it again. I stopped touching you because it started being more than affection. I put some distance between us because I'm your CO and I had to. I've tried to be a better friend since you came back, but I don't always know how. I've made just about every possible mistake with you. Maybe this is another one. Maybe I misheard what you said before. Maybe it was just a parting shot and you didn't mean it. Maybe you did want that then but you don't now. I still do. I always have. But that wasn't why I asked you to stay here. If mixed signals were pissing you off, I didn't mean to mix them and I apologize. I asked you to stay here because I'm scared to death of what's happening to me and having you here is the only thing that helps. You're also dead on your feet and I don't want you driving." He pushed back, let his arms drop. "I think that covers everything but what you said about Carter. I'll get the de-icer. You should put some more coffee on for yourself, but that's up to you."

Daniel closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the wall as Jack went down the hall toward the garage passthrough in the back. The back of Jack's house was really the side; the house was built all askew to the orientation of street and yard. Jack had built the house, and he'd probably built it that way on purpose. He'd built it without a wet bar. He'd built it without a guestroom or second bedroom, no room that could ever be construed as a child's room; the spare room had built-in shelves and a built-in hutch and desk and no room for a bed. It was a house of absences, all of which signified. Sometime during the year before Daniel had left, the sofa in the living room had been exchanged for the one that didn't fold out into a bed. The basement rec room had no couch, just a recliner with a permanent beer-can-size dent in the arm and a bunch of folding chairs for when people came over to watch the games, which since Daniel had stopped coming over was never. The house was always immaculately tidy to the point of sterility. The pictures of Jack's family appeared and disappeared from various places, as if he could never decide whether to leave them up or down. That was the house that Jack built. His father had been a contractor. A brawling, beer-drinking Irishman who lost his first son to the conflict in Vietnam and whose strong, quiet wife kept the family together. That and a few other things -- that he'd wanted Special Forces all along, that it would have killed his family if he'd blown off college to enlist and he ended up Air Force because that was the academy that would take him with his high-school record of disciplinary problems marring the perfect grades and sports stardom, that he'd been an unofficial prisoner of an unofficial war for four months, that he'd lost his son and then his wife, that he'd negotiated a fragile peace with alcoholism after the first Abydos mission -- were all he knew about Jack, and in aggregate more than anyone else knew, although other people had some of the various pieces.

This, he hadn't known.

He still had the coat in his hand. He was shaking with cold. He couldn't seem to move off the wall. Jack came back with boots that would be a shade too big for him, two pairs of wool socks, a turtleneck and a sweater that would be a shade too small for him. He took the coat from Daniel and shoved de-icer in one pocket, a pair of gloves and a wool cap in the other. "You passing on the coffee?"

"I'm passing on the drive."

"OK." Jack took the coat from him and hung it on a peg beside the door, put the boots under it. In case he changed his mind. Then he held out the turtleneck and sweater. "I'm gonna lay on a fire. I can sleep out there. It'll be a few minutes 'til it's warm, though. You should either put these on if you want to sit and talk, or go inside and get into bed. I put extra blankets at the foot for you."

Daniel took the clothes, but said Jack's name as he started for the living room, belaying him.

"Yeah?" Jack said, pausing.

"Let's go to bed. Both of us. Inside."

Jack hesitated. "We should talk about this, Daniel."

"I'm really tired, Jack, and I'm freezing. I want you. I've wanted you for a long time. But what I wanted more than anything else was just to be close to you. Next to you. Let's just get into bed, OK?"

"Yeah. OK."

He could barely put one foot in front of the other. All the adrenaline of anger had ebbed, and the shock of alertness from the cold, and it turned out that Jack was right about him driving; if the locks hadn't been iced he'd have been only partway to his house when this hit. He went around to the far side of Jack's bed, dropped his clothes on the floor, got his body under the covers and his glasses under the pillow. Jack finished turning off the lights and the stereo and the coffeemaker and came in behind him without turning the light on. Daniel heard him change into sweats and a T-shirt, brush his teeth in the dark. He didn't linger over any of it. He wasn't delaying. He came right into bed after that.

Daniel scooched over to Jack's side and pushed into his arms, pushed his leg between Jack's legs. Jack's body went soft, welcoming him in, wrapping around, but Jack cocked his hips away. Daniel reached down, cupped his butt, and pulled until Jack yielded. Their bodies fitted perfectly, right down to the angle of erections. Daniel rubbed into the slot between cool hardness and soft heat. It was so easy.

"Daniel," Jack warned, a warm wash of breath over Daniel's mouth.

Daniel stilled the insistence of his hips, but kept their groins touching. He felt the pull of sleep like a weight, like a form of gravity that warped comprehension. He didn't know why Jack should warn him off. Coming was nice. But maybe Jack didn't want to sleep in the wet, or have to get up to clean off. Daniel said, "I'm too tired to go down on you. Let me sleep for a couple of hours." The space under the covers heated soporifically, wonderfully. He'd wanted this for seven years. It was a fantasy come true. That was something you should stay awake for. But if he tried to give Jack head he'd fall asleep with Jack's dick in his mouth. Old married couple. He was too tired even to laugh.

"We should have said," he mumbled, into a blur of dreams.

When he woke up, he was on his other side. Jack was wrapped around him from behind, sleeping heavily, breathing into his hair. A profound sense of peace and rightness and safety washed through him. Then tears stung his eyes. He wasn't sure why. For the waste of years; for the imminent loss? Jack roused a little. Said, "Hey. Go back to sleep." He said, "I'm not really awake." Jack said, "That's OK then," and lapsed back into sleep. When Daniel woke again, the room was still velvety dark, but he could feel dawn curling around the edge of the world, tightening on the horizon. He was on his back. Jack was awake, propped on an elbow, watching him. A warm hand lay on his chest, thumb skirting his nipple but not touching. Jack's leg was bent across both of his.

"This still OK?" Jack said quietly.

"Yeah," Daniel said, sleepily mesmerized by the rugged planes of Jack's face in the seep of streetlight around the edges of the blinds. "Move your thumb. Stroke."

Jack blinked. He moved his thumb in a light, slow circle. The nipple hardened; Jack hardened. Daniel was already hard; they'd been ragging him for years, offworld, about his morning boners, which he never bothered to try to hide in his quest for coffee first thing. The caress of lightly callused flesh was delicious, gentle. Jack moved softer fingertips across to the other nipple unasked. Daniel's eyes slid closed and his lips parted. The stimulation sent a cascade of tiny sparks down to his groin. He arched a little, and said, "Lower. Touch me."

Jack stroked down his body to his bare penis. Although they'd already said and done more than enough to incriminate themselves to surveillance, Daniel was aware that he was noisy during sex and he should try not to be noisy now, but he couldn't stifle a soft gasp. No one had touched him in years. No one had ever touched this body at all. When he first came back, he'd barely been able to touch himself. He wished Jack had been there to touch him, while everything was still new again. But he was here now, and it was still new again, this kind of touch.

"Daniel," Jack said softly, and eased off his left arm, tucked in with his head on the same pillow as Daniel, while his palm ran gently up the length of Daniel's shaft, and down, and up.

There wasn't time to spend hours just touching, just basking in touch. "Do you have lube?" Daniel asked quietly, when Jack's palm ran halfway down again and Jack's fingertips brushed his lower abs and Jack's hand closed around him.

"You need it for this?" Jack said, hand warm and gentle on him, barely squeezing, thumb caressing.

"I want you in me when I come."

"Slow down, Daniel."

"I'm already close just from this."

"Then come from this. Let me do that for you."

"There's no time."

"You going somewhere?"

"Not by choice. But things happen." He reached down, drew Jack's hand off him, turned inside the curve of the arm so it went around his waist. "At least take your clothes off."

Jack pursed his lips. "I'm not falling for that." His fingers stroked down the curve of Daniel's spine.

Daniel shivered and pressed closer. "I'm not trying to trick you. I'm being very clear about what I want. Before the phone rings or the pagers go off."

"Or I go Ancient in one swell foop?" Jack said -- but he pressed Daniel back so he could push his sweats off, twist up to strip off his shirt. He reached behind him into the nightstand and rummaged. Daniel turned onto his stomach before the touch of Jack's bare skin, full-frontal, could push him over the edge. His erection was throbbing. Even the high-count thread of Jack's sheets brought him close. "Nothing's gonna happen in the next couple of hours," Jack said. He pressed his face briefly into Daniel's shoulder, not quite kissing. "Let's take this slow."

"Go in slow," Daniel said. "I use my fingers a lot, but this body has never had sex."

"Daniel." Jack closed his eyes, dropped his head. "God."

"You do want this," Daniel said, checking.

"Yes. But it doesn't have to be ... "

"It does for me." Daniel smiled. "Come on, Jack. You'd think there could be _one place_ where we don't argue."

"No smiling," Jack said, smiling. His hand smoothed over Daniel's butt, caressing, and also feeling him, appreciating the contours, the muscle underneath. Daniel went very still, and then very yearning, at the touch of the hand and at the shy white curve of that smile in the dark. Jack never smiled, not like that. Neither of them ever really smiled anymore. Not happy smiles. Not sweet smiles, like that one.

Daniel opened his thighs and reached back to spread himself. Jack's expression changed completely. Eyes searching Daniel's, he ran a fingertip very lightly down the inside of one cheek, then stroked over the hole. Daniel lost focus on a soft, hoarse moan. The sensation was exquisite. Jack's touch was perfect.

"Daniel," Jack said. "You're really ... This is so sweet. What you want is too much."

"You won't fuck this up, Jack." Daniel managed to focus on the dark blur of Jack's eyes. "Keep going."

Jack swallowed, and moved his hand away. His fingers came back with a dollop of some kind of thick gel. He swirled it tenderly into the opening; the cool slickness on Daniel's hot flesh was delicious. Very careful with what blunt fingernail there was, Jack worked a fingertip just barely in. Daniel felt Jack's surprise through it, how easy it was. It made him happy -- the easiness, the rightness -- and the soft surprise told him something he'd never have asked. The ecstasy he felt as Jack slid his finger all the way in, feeling his way, meeting no resistance, relief singing through his skin, was as much from the shared joy of discovery as it was from the penetration. But the penetration was _so good_. He opened his mouth to ask Jack not to try for the prostate, he didn't want to feel that yet, it would be too much and he just wanted to feel Jack in him, feel Jack touching him, but Jack wasn't looking for it; Jack was just feeling him, just being in him, not probing, and when he drew out it was to stroke slow, wondering circles around and over the opening, and then slide in again.

When he withdrew his finger the next time, it was to squeeze more gel onto his fingertips and try for two. He pressed them up into Daniel, slowly twisting. Daniel rose into it, wincing away into the pillow, too good, way way too good, and said, "Not on your fingers. Jack."

Jack gave a ragged sigh and drew gently out. "I don't keep condoms around," he said. "You all right with that? I haven't been with anyone in ... I don't know how many blood tests. A lot."

"I'm all right with that." He'd never actually known how much medical information was released to the team leaders and base second-in-command, and it came to him that Jack might not be worried about risk to himself under the circumstances, so he said, "It's the same here. Jack. Come _on_."

Jack shifted over him. His knees spread Daniel wider. A tremor ran through Daniel's belly and ass when the head of Jack's cock pressed into the muscle. Daniel closed his eyes and breathed deep.

"Daniel," Jack said, his voice breaking a little.

Softly, Daniel said, "Push."

Braced on his elbows, Jack pushed into him on a slow, strong roll of hips. Daniel let out a short, high sound as he was spread, but there was no discomfort, only pleasure so new and intense he could barely process it. The entry was slow, steady, unhesitating; once Jack committed, he didn't falter or second-guess. Daniel pushed into it, raising his ass, and Jack gasped and dropped his head, a ruff of hair tickling Daniel's nape, but he didn't stop moving until Daniel was filled. Then he rocked in him, slowly, and gently circled his hips. "All right?" he said.

"Yeah," Daniel managed, breath without voice.

"Am I hitting the spot?"

"No don't try yet," Daniel gasped. The penetration, the pressure was so fantastically good he could barely stand it. He almost writhed, but pushed at the pillow instead, trying to shove it out from under his face because with his ass raised it was bending his neck in half. He was so weak with pleasure that he could only get it partway out. Jack reached up and pulled it the rest of the way, started to toss it aside and then reconsidered and smushed it into the space between Daniel's head and the headboard, a buffer for Daniel to push into. Daniel rested his forearms in it, his curled fingers, and laid the side of his head down. With his neck eased, there was only the overwhelming, sweetnumb ecstasy of full penetration, Jack's long, smooth cock completely sheathed in him, his ass spread around it, the heat and the pressure and the sweet cool slickness, and he was so weak with it that he couldn't even close his fists.

Still pushed up on one arm, Jack ran the back of his right hand over Daniel's hair, ran the knuckle lightly around the rim of Daniel's ear. "Does it hurt, Daniel?" he asked, softly, shakily. "I can pull out really slow ... "

The past minute played back through Daniel's head like a video of himself viewed from above: ass pushing up in what could be a pain response, barely audible halfhearted _yeah_ when asked if he was all right, a gasped plea not to try for the gland, scrabbling to shove the pillow away. Not even mixed signals; wrong signals. "It doesn't hurt at all," he said, "it's so good I don't know ... I can't ... oh god. It's OK, Jack. It's good." He winced, let out a moan, at words failing him and pleasure he could barely comprehend much less describe.

Jack planted his right arm and sagged a little with relief. His lips stroked over Daniel's ear, a nuzzle that went hesitant almost right away but it seemed he couldn't stop. "OK," he breathed. "OK. That's good."

Daniel contracted on him, and felt that Jack had softened a little, but the deliberate squeeze of muscle made them both moan and the swell of Jack coming fully hard again made Daniel moan again, helplessly, wave after wave of pleasure coursing through his lower body, and the hot wash of Jack's breath and Jack's voice over his ear, the heat of Jack's body soaking into his back, his inner thighs, the hot scent of both of them filling the bed, the room. "I didn't know, I've never, how good just the, the pressure," he said, still trying to explain. "The gland might be too much, that's all, I only meant, direct pressure on the ... oh, god." He contracted again, pushed a little, moaning, and Jack pushed into it, hot gust of breath against his cheek an unvoiced groan, and he started to laugh, and it was like laughing through tears, the unbearable hot sweet stimulation and the absurdity bubbling through it: "Oh my god, we so should have talked about this."

This time Jack understood him. He smiled into Daniel's sideburn, a shaky chuckle running down through his body where it touched Daniel's, and said, through minuscule pushes that sent surges of pleasure through both of them, "So now, we're clear, that we have no idea, what we're doing."

"No, experience, whatsoever," Daniel said, laughing, moaning.

"But we can still have, these little chats," Jack said, smile curving into Daniel's ear, dick working even more deeply, even more sweetly into Daniel's ass.

"It's good," Daniel acknowledged, and then, "Oh god, Jack, it's good, it's so good ... "

Jack rocked in him, hips catching a slow, gentle rhythm, and said "This too? This good?" into Daniel's ear, and Daniel moaned, "Yes, yes ... god, Jack, I can _feel_ ... the head ... oh, god, it's good, your cock is _so good_ ... " He felt a tremor go through Jack's arms, realized he'd been holding half a pushup for longer than Daniel could count back, and said, "Put your weight on me ... it's OK, let your chest ... "

Jack sank into him, groaning with relief and then groaning with increased arousal as the shift in weight changed the feeling of the penetration. Daniel lifted his chin to make room for Jack's face and pushed his ass up into Jack's groin and the whole assemblage of their joined bodies shifted. Daniel's cock dragged in the bedding and he twisted his head to muffle his outcry in the mattress.

Jack's heartbeat was pounding into his back; Jack's breath was hot against his throat, starting to come very fast. Jack rocked into him, gently, deeply, and Daniel made that high, helpless sound again and Jack said, fighting for each breath, "Ease your hips down. I'll keep doing this."

"Jack ... it's so ... you're so ... "

"Down. Just ease down. That's it. Oh, yeah. That's it. Just ... yeah ... "

"Jack ... "

"Just like that. Just ... Oh, god. Daniel. I'm ... "

"Jack ... yeah ... "

"I'm gonna come."

"Oh -- ggggnng -- me too. Jack -- "

"Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh, _yeah_, that's _it_ ... "

"Jack, now, now -- "

Jack's body engulfed him in a surge of weight and warmth and muscle, pressing him into the bed, rolling his hips into the mattress, pushing and spreading and rocking him through the orgasm. Technically he supposed he came because the way Jack moved was thrusting his cock into the tight heat between his body and the bed, but it was the aching fullness he was aware of, the deep anal contractions, his body clenching around the rigid, fleshy pressure inside it. His knees and elbows pushed against the mattress, and the mattress gave and Jack's weight didn't. He was overcome by a total, visceral awareness that Jack's body was making him come he was coming with Jack plastered against him he was coming on Jack's cock Jack was fucking him and he was coming and Jack could feel it on his cock and through his whole body, and his orgasm peaked into the no-mind moment of transcendence that was like ascension inside-out. In the next nanosecond, when his brain and his gut reengaged, he was overcome by the longing to have Jack's hand on his cock when it was happening, feel Jack touching his penis when he came, holding it, and another orgasmic surge went through him at just the thought of it.

The slow rocking had gotten slower. Daniel could feel the moment when it stopped being Jack using his cock to make it good and make him come, and became that last inward push before orgasm -- became Jack rubbing off against the hot, tight interior of Daniel's body. The shift of body-focus sent another surge through Daniel, a spike of what would have been lust if he wasn't just on the far side of climax himself.

He tried to feel Jack coming inside him, and he couldn't, but he could feel the orgasm through Jack's entire body, and after a moment he could feel a deeper fullness, a deeper pressure, that he knew was Jack's come going up inside him. It touched places that he'd never been able to reach, never thought of trying; it was a sensation he could never have imagined, almost numbingly sweet, almost too much to bear the same way the penetration had been in those first minutes. He whined into the bedding, and a last contraction squeezed through him, a last, exhausting thrust into the mattress; it pushed a groan from Jack, who had come silently with his face jammed into the side of Daniel's jaw.

They melted into a boneless lump. He could feel his heart pound, and Jack's, feel the feathery touch of breath on his skin, but the rest was indistinguishable, a puddle of flesh. A prickle of gooseflesh passed from Jack's skin into his, and back, and shivered away.

Jack closed his mouth, swallowed; moved a hand up into Daniel's hair, sloppily, forgetting that it had been lubed, not caring when he remembered. He didn't stir after that for a long time. Then he lifted himself slightly. Daniel's shallow breathing normalized. Jack rested his brow on Daniel's cheekbone, then his temple when Daniel lowered his head a little. A muscular shudder went through him. A wave of awareness of what they'd just done, Daniel supposed. He didn't have to ask, now, whether it was in the good way or not, in the _holy shit, I just got what I've wanted all these years_ way and not the _oh fuck what have I done_ way. Whatever had knocked their wavelengths out of alignment, it was better now. They were starting to synch back up.

So he didn't understand it when he felt the old pain go through his heart again, like a gust of wintry cold.

Jack's lips brushed his ear, and he shivered, and it felt like a response to the chill in his heart instead of the brush over his ear. Jack shifted, squeezed, and it felt like a hug, and the pain in his heart got worse. He wanted too much. He wanted this too much. He should know better.

He should know better than to love what he was going to lose.

"Daniel," Jack breathed, the lowest, softest tone Daniel had ever heard from him. "Daniel."

"I'm here," Daniel said. His throat was tight. He squeezed his eyes shut tighter than that and tried not to let out the sound that was trying to come up.

Jack's face pushed close. "You're not. You go so far sometimes I think I'll never see you again." Again the lips brushed his skin in a not-quite kiss.

"I'm right here," Daniel said. Then, chilled to his core and warmer than he'd ever been, safer than he'd ever been, drugged by warm afterglow around a shard of icy terror, he said, "You're the one who's going this time."

"Not tonight," Jack said.

Maybe he meant that he wasn't going tonight, or maybe he meant _we don't talk about that tonight_. To either, or both, Daniel said, "OK."

There was something he should close the door on, but he didn't know what it was anymore.

"Don't pull out," he said, into the pillow. "Not yet."

"Gonna fall out," Jack said. "Nothin' I can do about that."

"Then just don't roll off."

Jack relaxed onto him; Daniel hadn't realized he'd gone tense. Jack let his forehead down onto the mattress, breathed deep. "I'll fall asleep," he said, into the crook of Daniel's neck.

"That's OK. That's good."

"OK." There was a moment of quiet, and then Jack said, "Gimme an elbow or something if you can't breathe," and fell asleep, the way he did -- completely awake, and then completely asleep, no drowsy transition.

Daniel hovered in the realms between sleep and waking, vaguely aware of the light growing in the room, warming from creeping blue into rosy dawn. Then he did sleep -- for a while, it seemed, because when he woke the room had gone golden. Jack was still on top of him, and hardening again.

"Want me off?" Jack asked quietly, from behind his head.

"No, god no," he said, slurred, still half asleep. Jack had slipped out of him, to dangle down between his legs, and now his erection was swelling right up against Daniel's balls, and it made Daniel tighten and swell in response. "Oh, god, that's so good."

Jack gave his hips a slow roll, and suffusing pleasure spread through Daniel, wakening his whole body. He tried to say yes, good, more, and it came out a moan. Jack shifted to slot his cock up into the crack and rolled his hips again, and then again. At some point he'd pulled the covers over them. The warmth was viscous, buoyant, the motion lulling. It was like rising and falling on the swells of a warm sea. Daniel moaned again, long and low, as Jack's cock worked down into the crack and the long, smooth shaft rubbed over the hole, scratchy with bits of old come and still silky with lube.

"Go in," he said, when the slow rub had him nearly too aroused to form words.

"We can switch, Daniel," Jack said softly.

"Next time," Daniel said, desperate to feel that long, smooth cock push into him again, still feeling half cheated that he hadn't felt it ejaculate because he'd still been coming himself. A voiceless voice in the back of his head was telling him to stop demanding things, telling him to find out what Jack wanted, telling him that synched-up wavelengths or no he didn't know the first thing about Jack's preferences and maybe Jack wasn't comfortable with this and maybe the offer to switch wasn't an offer but a request, reminding him that Jack had wanted to start slow and all he kept coming back with was _fuck me now_ because he was terrified of losing this before he'd had it but no amount of having would ever be enough and he might be giving Jack the wrong idea, making Jack think he didn't want him that way, but right now he didn't even know if he did, he only knew he was blindly hungry to feel that hard cock slide up his ass again, feel it move in him, feel it shoot, and it was too complicated, the asking, the explaining, the answering -- and by then Jack had reached the tube over and squeezed lube into his palm and his hand was moving between them.

Jack slicked himself and took hold of himself in the same twisting sweep of hand. He rubbed the head around a little, gently, making sure of the target and tripling the stimulation in the bargain, and then he guided himself in. The entry was like butter, like silk. Daniel's body welcomed him like a lost part of itself, as if something perennially and indefinably wrong was coming right again, and they made almost the same sound at the same moment, a deep breathy groan.

One hand covered his head, warm and reassuring; he could feel the other arm reach up, feel Jack take hold of the top edge of mattress to pull himself in deeper. An orgasmic flush spread down Daniel's back, prickled the flesh of his butt, and Jack murmured, "Oh, yeah," and pressed in deeper. Daniel started to spasm, deeply, and Jack pushed up into him and held there, grinding, every muscle in his body contracted, all the iron-muscled strength of him straining into Daniel's density and weight, as though he could push past the barrier of separate flesh, push completely inside of him. Daniel came in a deep implosion, so intense that the cry in his throat choked off into a strangled sound. Behind his eyelids the darkness sparkled like ice at night. Jack was hanging on, shaking, clamped to him. His grip eased off as the orgasm eased. For a second Daniel was sure that Jack had come, that he'd missed it completely this time, but Jack stayed fully hard. It felt so good, _so good,_ that living, sensitive hardness in him as his body went soft and spent.

Jack stayed still while the aftershocks shuddered through Daniel, and then said, into the nape of Daniel's neck, "If I come that's gonna be it for a while."

"That's OK," Daniel said, dreamily replete and sensitized, not really processing what Jack was saying.

"I mean for the rest of the day, maybe tonight too."

The chill gusted through him again, icy and terrible, and he groped down to Jack's flank. "Don't pull out."

"Daniel ... " Jack took a deep, steadying breath. "I don't have this kind of control. If this is what you need, lemme get out, cool off ... "

Jack thought that if he came, that would be it -- that what Daniel needed was the penetration of a hard dick, the physical connection of intercourse, and if he couldn't provide that he'd be letting Daniel down. Jack knew his limitations and he'd wanted to take this slow, use the time they had, and there was plenty of time for making out, making love, but if the next orgasm killed his capacity to achieve an erection for just one day then there was no time at all if he came now, because tomorrow they had to go back and fight for the program, fight for his life.

Daniel understood that at the same moment that he understood why he'd kept demanding to be fucked -- because he needed to feel Jack come in him, not just know it but literally _feel_ it, he couldn't settle into the slow lovemaking that Jack had asked for until he'd felt that. And Jack would only ask him for it, only offer and suggest and never demand, because this was the end, it was all ending just as it began and what Jack wanted was for Daniel to have whatever he needed, as much of it as he could give him before their lives called them back, before duty pulled them apart.

"Daniel," Jack said, a hoarse last-chance warning against the back of his head, as close as Jack would ever come to begging -- begging him to make a decision, because even holding himself still in Daniel's ass was enough to make him come, and he couldn't hold it back any longer.

Across Daniel's mind's eye ran visions of the coming day, playing out in every possible way, all the things they could do for each other with their hands and their mouths, all the ways that the mountain could call them back, all the ways that if he let Jack defer this orgasm just to have a hard cock to offer him later, that later might never come. He wanted to feel this, but more than anything in the universe right now, he wanted Jack to have this, before it was too late.

"Come," Daniel said, squeezing with his hand, contracting inside. "Come in me. Let me feel you come in me."

With a broken groan, Jack ground into him, and let go.

Daniel's body jerked with the first hard spurt, so sensitized that he felt something like a grazing impact up deep inside. The pulses that followed sent concentric ripples of stimulation up his rectum, pleasure radiating into his groin. Under his hand, Jack's _skin_ contracted, and muscle clenched, and Jack's gut-punched groan went into the bone of his skull, vibrated down his spine. He felt his asshole trembling around Jack's pulsing shaft. He felt the sheet pulled tight by Jack's fisting hands. Jack's heartbeat thundered into his chest cavity through the skin and muscle and bone of his back. He cried out as a sympathetic spasm went through him, and then his voice tangled with Jack's because he was dry-ejaculating and the feel of it was making Jack come harder. There was a blinding moment of circular feedback, and then Jack moaned into a shudder and went limp on him. For a few seconds, he was still intensely aroused and Jack was still very hard, and because he hadn't actually come it felt as though he was still coming, and every reflexive afterthrust of Jack's hips pushed another low cry from him, another swell of ecstasy through his groin and his gut. Finally a rush of soft euphoria washed the overload from his nerves, and he deflated under Jack's limp weight, and they just lay there in a messy sprawl, breathing hard, and then less hard, and then just breathing.

Even from that point, it took a long time to recover. Neither of them spoke or moved until, about twenty minutes later, Jack combed gentle fingertips through Daniel's hair and slowly drew his other arm down. It was an offer to get off him, if Daniel wanted that, but he didn't get off him, and that was an offer to stay like this all day, if Daniel wanted that.

"I don't know if I can move," Daniel said. "But I need to roll over."

Jack shifted, pushed up a little, withdrew in a long, rubbery slide that ended with a slight pop that made them both grunt. "OK?" he said, shifting onto his side.

Daniel made himself roll to face Jack instead of away. He'd had his back to him long enough. But it was hard, facing him. Strange. Jack's expression was soft, a little worried. Daniel tried smiling; he didn't know if his face pulled it off. "Better than OK," he said.

"You sore?" Jack watched him carefully, waiting for him to lie.

"Some," he said, not lying.

"Maybe you're not supposed to come with me in you. Not ... so much, like that. So many times."

"Where did you get an idea like that?"

"Thinkin' in the porn flicks maybe it's not just a question of the money shot. Maybe they're savin' 'em sore asses too."

Daniel almost laughed, but the truth was he had no idea. From what gay porn he'd seen, sore asses were an occupational hazard only top-billed tops avoided. But it didn't surprise him that what Jack would see in the same material would be professionals taking care of each other and themselves. "How in the world do you get hold of gay porn without the Air Force finding out?"

"Creative computing," Jack said. "Couple of years ago, one of my bolthole aliases had some plastic to burn and a thing for a male coworker. Did whatever he could to get a handle on it, figure it out. You can rest assured he covered his electronic tracks."

"But he didn't figure it out."

"He figured out that gay porn got him off spectacularly hard and he was still shit outta luck."

"You don't sound very glad that he was wrong. About the last part."

"I am glad. I am, Daniel." Jack gave him a tired smile, and got his dry hand untangled from between them to reach up and stroke a thumb over Daniel's lips. "But I need a better handle on what you want."

"OK," Daniel said, and took a breath. "OK. Now, see -- "

"You needed to feel me unload into you, you didn't feel it the first time because you were shooting at the time yourself, you needed me to fuck you and you're worried that you gave me the wrong idea and I'd think you were avoiding putting your dick in _my_ ass, you figured out why you were being pushy about what you wanted sexually and why all I want is to give it to you and you vowed that it wouldn't be just about you anymore. That much I get. That's not what I mean."

Daniel just blinked, for about five seconds. Then he said, "Actually I don't know why all you want is to give me whatever I want. But yeah, I get that it is. And apparently that isn't what you meant."

"I don't know why either. I love you; I love you and I've been in love with you for years and that's enough of a reason for me, but you know any time you feel like nailing me through the bed, or making out with me for a few hours straight, whether or not I can get it up and whether or not I come, you're not gonna hear me complaining. And thanks for that orgasm, by the way. It was a beaut."

"Yeah," Daniel said, blinking again. "Here too."

"What I mean is that I'm dying. That changes everything. That's why we're having this conversation, that's why we're in bed right now -- I don't know what possessed you to throw me that curveball last night but, gift horse, mouth, yadda. The thing is, I'm still dying. I'm -- fucking terrified, to tell you the truth, and I know you're scared too, and people do things, feel things, when they're ... Crap, I've really gotta wash my hands."

Daniel grabbed hold of the hand that had moved to touch him and then stopped because Jack remembered, again, that it was sticky with lube and old come. He brought it to his mouth, sucked on the index and middle fingers -- eyes closing, briefly, a stolen moment of pleasure -- and then moved the hand down firmly between them and said, "You really don't. Keep talking."

It took Jack a second to pull himself back from wherever the finger fellatio had sent him. He gave his head a small shake, then said, "I'm either gonna make it or I'm not. I don't want to talk about it past that -- that's for work, that's for tomorrow, and I'm damned if I'll have the same agonizing conversation with you that Carter made me have with her about the headsucker. Tomorrow, OK, but not today. What I need to know is ... What we've got here, Daniel, is a shitload of sexual attraction, and something so far beyond that that it's way outta my league. It would be safer for both of us to just enjoy the sex and the company for the rest of the day and then see how the dice fall. It would be even safer for you to leave after breakfast, go back to whatever you do on the weekends. I just ... " He laughed, a flash of white teeth and curved lips and a sweet, genuine laugh of self-deprecating amazement, a beautiful laugh, _musical_, and a roll of his eyes and shake of his head before he deliberately, firmly reached up the sticky hand with the damp sucked-on fingers and ruffled Daniel's hair, a ruffle that turned into an adoring caress, and then a grip on the back of Daniel's neck, almost bruising before it eased. "I just love you, you son of a bitch. I don't want you to go and I don't want to leave you, I just want to be in love with you for whatever time I've got left. So I need to know what you want. So I know ... how to ... be, with you. Assuming I might make it, and assuming I might not."

"You're trying to protect me from your own death," Daniel said, slowly, in an appalled kind of wonderment.

"I'm trying to protect myself from my dying regret being that I let this happen and I broke your heart. Yell at me all you want for being a paternalistic shit, it is what it is."

Daniel slid his hand up Jack's forearm to Jack's hand. He gently disengaged it from his neck and moved it to his side. He scrunched forward, right into Jack's space, and took Jack's face in both hands. He searched Jack's eyes; they usually looked dark as dark chocolate, but in the wintry sunlight angling between the window blinds the irises were the golden brown of tiger's eye, for the moment before the pupils dilated and eclipsed them into neutral rings. He ran his thumbs over Jack's lips until they parted; then, cupping his jawbone on both sides, he brought his own lips in to touch them. He kissed gently; tilted his face and kissed a little more, eyes open, watching Jack's eyes. "This is what I want, Jack," he said, and kissed again, softly and tenderly. "For as long as we have." He kissed again, a little deeper, and felt a flicker of tongue against his, felt the first promise of Jack kissing back. He smiled into Jack's mouth, into the curve of Jack's mouth starting to smile back, and said, "As much of this as you can take, I want to give." Then Jack was kissing him back, for real, arms closing around him and eyes sliding closed, and he closed his own eyes and melted into Jack's mouth melting into his. A long, tongue-tip-swirling, deep-oral-penetration time later, he drew back, and said, "OK? Is that all right?"

"More than OK," Jack said, smiling warmly at him, happily, lovingly.

It took Daniel a second to recover from what that smile did to him. He gave his head a little shake, then smiled back and said, "So this making out for hours thing."

"Yeah, kinda makin' a good start on that here."

"Good," Daniel said. "That's good. That works for me."

They kissed, and touched, and stroked, and explored, for about an hour, until Daniel got hard again; then Jack sucked him off gently, sliding one finger up his ass, whining when Daniel came as though he were vicariously coming himself. They napped for a while, woke sticky and too hot in the sun-heated house, showered until the water ran cold, warmed up back in the bed they'd slept and fucked in. Breakfast wound up being a late brunch, and then a long, quiet walk in the sunshine and winter air, through slush that would freeze again overnight. Back home, Daniel laid Jack out nude on the freshly made bed and tongued him, kissed him all over, making love to the soft, heavy package between his legs, turning him to rim him into a semi-conscious trance. The phone never rang, the pagers never went off. When Jack fell asleep after a deep backrub, Daniel went out to the living room and called in. Only Teal'c was on base; Daniel said that he'd stayed at Jack's to keep an eye on him and that he seemed fine so far, no signs of going Ancient, and Teal'c said he was gratified to hear that and would pass the information along.

"You're going in before first shift, right?" Jack said, not moving from his facedown sprawl, when Daniel came back into the bedroom with a book. "Charm this new director into seeing our side of things?"

"I'm not as likely to find common ground with her as you might think," Daniel said, laying the book aside and shucking his sweatpants and stretching out with Jack. "You can't see it, but I'm not very civilian anymore, from a civilian perspective."

"She's female and you're you. If she's the least smidgen heterosexual, just blink at her a few times and your work there will be done."

Daniel smiled into Jack's shoulder, kissed, gave a soft bite. "She's a renowned pacifist. I can engage her on the terms of her own body of work, but it's a crapshoot whether she'll Get It."

"You were marching in anti-war protests when I was fighting in the Gulf. It'll come back to you."

"Activism was a replacement for sexual connection, same as music and drugs and everything else I gave up to focus on work, including sex. And that was all a very long time ago."

Jack turned over, and pulled him close. "I think it's the universe you want to connect with, Daniel. It's the universe you want that orgasmic oneness with."

"Oh, and what, you're just a substitute for that?"

Jack cocked his head, regarded him gently. "Maybe."

Daniel shook his head in fond exasperation. "Idiot," he said softly into Jack's lips. "You _are_ the universe. And past that I'm not allowed to talk about today."

"Nope," Jack said agreeably, and kissed him back for a long time, and then said, "So where did you put that lube when we cleaned up? I have some hypotheses about stimulation of the prostate gland and I need a hand testing them for validity."

Stroking Jack, inside, and gently sucking him even though he stayed soft, made Daniel so hard he was leaking. Jack was semi-coherent with an ecstasy he was making slurred efforts to describe as just like sexual arousal and the hell with what his plumbing was saying, and he wanted to feel Daniel up in him, and Daniel was well acquainted with that yearning now and more than happy to oblige him. When he was three-quarters in, behind Jack with Jack on his side and one leg drawn up bent at the knee, Jack let out a stunned groan that sounded so much like pain that Daniel, who'd been on the verge of coming since the first half-inch of penetration, nearly lost his erection entirely. But it was either the miracle of the prostate kicking in, or the radiating pleasure of being penetrated, or the ecstasy of being penetrated by the weeping erection of someone you loved, or all of the above. Jack was hard, and stayed hard past the point where Daniel, even moving with gentle care inside him, could hang on.

"I'm gonna come soon," Daniel said. "Even if I slow down more. Let me touch you so you can come first."

"No," Jack said. He'd removed Daniel's hand from his penis twice, first gently and then with distracted irritation, and he caught hold of it now to belay it before it could move. "Couldn't take that. Not kidding."

Daniel pressed closer, twisted his hand free to slide his arm up Jack's chest and hold him. "I don't have to come into you. I can pull out. Just tell me now."

"Want you to," Jack said. "Just don't thrust too hard. OK?"

"OK," Daniel said, and kissed, and pulled Jack into him tight; with two slow strokes he was coming, it was so tight and slick and warm and he could feel the soft, sensitive tissue trembling after every deliberate contraction Jack gave to squeeze it tighter for him. Although they'd long since given up stifling sounds and Daniel was very noisy in bed, the sounds Jack made when Daniel orgasmed into him were louder than the sounds Daniel made, and more disbelieving and broken and overwhelmed. Daniel came for longer than he could ever remember coming, ever, because he knew the difference between the pain sounds and the pleasure sounds now, and he knew the brokenness was the good kind; he knew Jack was getting something he'd craved all his life and barely even been allowed to admit to himself.

"I want to suck you," he said, against Jack's ear, as soon as he could talk, while the aftershocks were still jolting through him, while Jack was still whining into the pillow. "While you can still feel me in you. I want you to come into my mouth. Can I do that? Do you want that?"

"Yeah," Jack said, "yeah, don't wait, just -- ahhhhhh fuuuuuck," and arched back gasping in his looked-like-pain ecstasy as Daniel slowly, carefully withdrew his still-hard penis, intensely focused on the pull and give and push of the muscles inside Jack, Jack's body telling him how to withdraw and telling him that this was pleasure too. He turned Jack onto his back while he was still groaning, his hands flopping up to his face.

Then, lightning-fast as Daniel reached for the lube, Jack flung one hand to the side to cover it. "No fingers," he said. "Too much."

Daniel kissed him briefly on the mouth in acknowledgment before moving kiss by kiss down Jack's body. He understood what Jack was saying; for him the prostate stimulation and the feeling of orgasm were still two discrete pleasures and he was nowhere near ready to try the combined version yet. Into Jack's belly, he said, "I could give you some pressure there, some fingers just inside, not on the gland," and Jack said, "No, I can still feel you, it's good, it's ... Christ, Daniel, christ, just suck me -- "

Daniel lifted Jack's cock and swiped his tongue across his lips and gently engulfed the top of it in his mouth. Cool by comparison, as sweetly smooth on his tongue as it had felt against his body -- he understood why Jack had whined. His fingers trembled when he moved them down to stroke Jack's balls, and when Jack moaned and opened his legs Daniel moaned too, and turned his hand to gently cup and hold. He realized, suddenly and belatedly, that he knew absolutely nothing about how Jack liked this, fast slick bobbing up-and-down or the combination of sucking and jerking he liked himself or the deep-throating he knew was out of the question the moment he took the head of Jack's cock into his oropharynx. But Jack had said _suck me_, and that was as clear an instruction as Daniel really needed to hear.

He pulled up, swirled his tongue around because it felt good and it made a sound come out of Jack that he hadn't heard before, a soft, awed sort of grunt, and then made a seal, and sucked.

"Jesus," Jack burst out, "_jesus_," and his cock gushed into Daniel's mouth.

Completely unprepared, Daniel was left practically gaping, his nice tight seal blown open when there was nowhere for the first shots of come to go; he groped the base of the shaft to hold it up when the head banged sideways into his molars, and then couldn't get his mouth closed on it in any way that would let him swallow, and ended up just sort of licking at it, lipping at it while it spurted. Come had gone pretty much everywhere -- his hand, his face, down the shaft -- and he was just starting to worry that his pathetically inexperienced slurping would be a turnoff when it came through that what Jack was gasping was "Oh fuck that's good, oh fuck that's it, like that, don't stop, oh christ." Then the problem was not to smile, because he really couldn't do this and smile, it pulled his lips too taut and Jack was liking the loose slurpy licks and nibbles. He kept it going as the spurting died off, stroking his mouth around the crown and down the shaft, dabbing with his tongue. Jack was still swearing a blue streak, but in a weak, hoarse whisper, and finally that tailed off too.

Daniel wiped his face off on Jack's belly and then watched Jack's cock soften with a gentle fascination, brushing his lips over it now and then, lightly licking. It took a long time, and he wondered if that was proportional to how good the orgasm was, or how sudden it was, or what. As it crossed his mind to wonder, he felt the chill in his chest again, and blinked up at Jack. He'd have stopped himself if he could, because he could feel what his face must show, but it was reflexive, unstoppable -- the need to turn to Jack when he remembered that he was probably never going to have the chance to find out.

"Get up here," Jack said, reaching an arm down.

Daniel came up into the circle of it and just lay there, his arm heavy on Jack's chest, Jack's fingertips running lightly, slowly back and forth over the tops of the soft hairs on his forearm.

"In one crucial respect, this is no different from any day, Daniel," Jack said, after a while. "We're always this close. It's just ... unusual to know it in advance. And, you know, get spectacularly laid."

"'In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed,'" Daniel said softly.

"Thoreau?"

"Close. Emerson."

After a long moment, Jack said, "Our safety's in each other."

"That too," Daniel said, and settled in to doze until it was time to figure out dinner, watch some tube or play some cards, and come back to bed before facing the icy roads in the morning.


End file.
